THE VAGINA DIALOGUES
………..when you travel, you don’t always find what you expect.
“So you’ve read ‘The Name of the Rose’ but you’ve never heard of ‘The Vagina Dialogues’?”, asks Rolf, in the tourism bureau in Melk, Austria.
I shake my head, startled at the title. It was my first surprise of the day. “Never heard of it.”
I’m in the tiny tourist information office in Melk, Austria, to get a city map. Leading tours, I’d visited the Baroque-style Abbey, star of Umberto Eco’s ‘The Name of the Rose’ mystery novel, but I’d never been in the town. The Benedictine abbey is a ‘must see’ stop for all of the Danube River cruise ships. A famous religious site plus lots of visitors, I assume, means Melk will be overrun with conservative ecclesiastical types and tourists. Regardless, I decide to explore the town.
“I’ll tell you about ‘The Vagina Dialogues’ as we walk,” Rolf says, as another volunteer comes in to take over. “Tell me what you think of the Middle Ages, what life was like 700 years ago in these parts.” Life was tough, I tell him, and short. People were very religious, conservative, and most folks barely survived. Lots of babies died before their first birthdays.
“Exactly. But how about sex?”, he says.
“Sex? Probably people were like the Puritans a few centuries later,” I say. “Uptight and tight lipped about it.” He nods.
“True,” he says, “but they let their hair down in unexpected ways. I’ll explain.” He wants to show me his town so we continue along the main street. As we walk, I see that the village isn’t what I expected. The wide, cobbled main street is filled with pedestrians, not massive trucks rumbling by or bustling tourists crowding into souvenir shops. The main town square is peaceful, locals wander in and out of bakeries, cafes, pharmacies, and a bookstore complete with a sleeping dog in front. Rolf notices my gaze.
“We are a town of only 5000 but host over 500,000 tourists a year,” Rolf says. “They arrive on those long, skinny river boats and take a tour through the abbey, bus back to their ships and leave. They rarely visit the town.” I see only one souvenir shop on the square.
I look up. On a high bluff overlooking the town and the Danube River is the massive Melk Abbey. From down here, it looks like an ocean liner sailing through the air, golden and white stripes layering up to 2 onion domed towers, and a huge cupola over the church in the back. I’d seen the ornate Baroque interior, with curlicues and gold and marble everywhere but the most impressive room is the huge library. For centuries, researchers came from all over Europe to use it, making it an early Google.
“The library still surprises us.’’, Rolf says. “It is as central to ‘The Name of the Rose’ as it is with ‘The Vagina Dialogues’. When Eco’s book was made into a movie with Sean Connery, we feared the town would be overrun with tourists and we would become Venice on the Danube. But that didn’t happen.” He’s right. Melk is still a town for the residents, not tourists, and is in little danger of becoming, as Rolf put it, ‘Venice on the Danube’.
“Let’s get a brandy and coffee,” Rolf suggests. We stroll up the main street, the cobbled stones forming fan patterns across the square, to a shop near the fountain.
“This is the Wieser Cafe,” he says, “one of my favorites.”
We go inside and Rolf greets the owner, Ingrid, like an old friend which she probably is. The shop is all gleaming glass and polished wood, the shelves lined with white wines and brandies of the region.
“I think a nice marillen with coffee would be perfect,” he says and I agree. Marillen is a brandy distilled from apricots to the clarity of pure water. Along with wine grapes, apricots grow well here in the Wachau Valley. As Ingrid works on our order, I walk along a wall packed with shiny bottles of Gruner Veltliner, the special dry white wine of the region.
Ingrid motions us to step outside and sit under a red-and-white striped canopy at a tiny round table. She places two silver trays in front of us, each with a coffee, a shot of marillen, and a small glass of water.
I sip the brandy first, hold it in my mouth, breathe in, and savor the heady sensation of fire before swallowing. Only at the last second do I detect a hint of apricot. It’s 10am but several locals sit around us enjoying a coffee and brandy. My next sip massages my throat and makes me take a deep, satisfied breath. I ask Rolf about The Vagina Dialogues.
“Ah,” he says, “the locals call it that but the real title is ‘The Rose Thorn’. It may change your mind about sex in the Middle Ages.” I sip and listen as he continues.
“The Middle Ages was a harsh, paternalistic time. Men ruled, women submitted. In some places in Europe, paternalism turned to misogyny. Most of the torture devices back then were designed to harm women. So it was a surprise when a monk discovered a manuscript stuck in another book’s binding in the library. It was written around 1300. When they translated it, they got another shock. The Rose Thorn is a conversation between a woman and her vagina about what men want in a woman. The woman and her vagina separate and argue with each other. The woman says men are attracted to her because of her charm and beauty. The vagina says she is wrong; the only reason men are attracted to her is because of the vagina.”
I stop him and ask, “A woman from 700 years ago published a poem like that? Something that would be banned in libraries all over the United States today? And she got away with it?”
“We don’t know if a man or woman wrote it, there is no signature, but poems like this were all over Europe at the time and filled with the most vulgar slang for body parts. The talking vagina has a long history in literature but there is no poem with a guy talking to his penis,” Rolf says and laughs. “The peasants of the Middle Ages were less embarrassed about such talk than polite society today.”
I ask if the vagina and the woman ever settle their dispute.
“The two decide to stay separated for a while and test their theories,” he says. “The woman, without her vagina, has few suitors and she is depressed about it. The vagina has relations with every man it meets but is disappointed that none of the relationships last. The two get back together and realize that they work best as a package.”
“What about the morals of the day, the church, sin and all of that?”, I ask.
“Oh, morality and sin never are mentioned in the poem. Those themes play no part. Even though the language is rough and racy, it is not pornographic and the lady is portrayed quite positively. It’s really a frank discussion of human relationships, not just sex,” he says. I sip my brandy and think about this.
“Regardless, didn’t the monks and the church ban such things?”, I ask.
“Apparently not since they kept copies of it in the monk’s library. That says a lot about the times. No book burnings like we had later under the Nazis!”, Rolf laughs. We finish our brandies and coffees and I thank him for the tour, and a new insight into the Middle Ages. We say goodbye and I return to the ship.
No throngs of tourists, no thundering traffic, some excellent brandy and a poem with a remarkable theme, Melk is not at all what I had assumed. I decide to have a Gruner Veltliner with dinner. Not a white wine drinker myself, I suppose it will be sweet and dull. I’m startled. The taste is unexpected; sunny, crisp, and deeply satisfying, much like the day.
